What's New in vCenter Orchestrator 5.1.3.1

vRealize Orchestrator 5.1.3.1 is a patch release that resolves an important issue. See Resolved Issues.

Downloading and Installing VMware vCenter Orchestrator 5.1.3.1

You can install Orchestrator 5.1.3.1 only on 64-bit operating system platform. If you have downloaded and installed VMware vCenter Server 5.1 Update 3, Orchestrator is already installed on your system and needs no further configuration.

To upgrade an installation of Orchestrator 4.2 on a 64-bit Microsoft Windows server that is different from the server on which vCenter Server runs, run the latest version of the Orchestrator standalone installer.

If vCenter Orchestrator 4.0.x is installed on the same 64-bit machine as vCenter Server 4.0.x, you cannot upgrade to Orchestrator 5.1.3.1 by upgrading to vCenter Server 5.1.3. VMware does not support the in-place upgrade of a standalone Orchestrator instance running on a 64-bit machine. To upgrade to vCenter Orchestrator 5.1.3.1, you must export the Orchestrator configuration settings, uninstall the existing Orchestrator instance, run the 64-bit Orchestrator installer, and import the configuration settings.

Earlier Releases of vCenter Orchestrator

Features and issues from earlier releases of vCenter Orchestrator are described in the release notes for each release. To review release notes for earlier releases of vCenter Orchestrator, click one of the following links:

Known Issues

The Orchestrator client cannot be started if it was running when upgrading to vCenter Orchestrator 5.1.3.1
If you have an instance of the Orchestrator client running on the same machine where the Orchestrator server is installed and you perform an upgrade to Orchestrator 5.1.3.1, the Orchestrator client cannot be stopped after the upgrade and you must stop the process manually. After you restart the machine, the Orchestrator client cannot be started again.

You might not be able to install vCenter Orchestrator 5.1.3.1 client on OSX Mountain Lion
On OSX Mountain Lion, if you unzip the vCenter Orchestrator 5.1.3.1 client ZIP package by using software different than the OSX built-in archiver, the Orchestrator client installer might not start. If you run the installer in a console window, you might see an error, such as com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[144]: ([0x0-0xc49c49].vCenterOrchestrator[14384]) Job failed to exec(3) for weird reason: 13.

Workaround: To start the Orchestrator client installer:

Open a console window and navigate to the directory where you unzipped the Orchestrator client.

Restarting vCO server service after reinstalling plug-ins adds Java exceptions to the logs
In the Troubleshooting tab of the Orchestrator configuration interface, if you reinstall plug-ins by clicking Reset current version and then restart the Orchestrator server, several Java exceptions are written to the Orchestrator server logs.

Orchestrator registry keys remain after you uninstall Orchestrator by using Windows Control Panel
If you uninstall Orchestrator using the Windows Control Panel, some Orchestrator registry entries are not removed.

Workaround: To remove the Orchestrator entries manually:

Click Start > Run.

Type regedit and press Enter.

In the Registry Editor, click File > Export to back up the current registry settings.

Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VMware.

Right-click the Orchestrator entries and select Delete.

You cannot upgrade Orchestrator during a vCenter Server upgrade
You cannot upgrade Orchestrator 4.2 to version 5.1.3.1 during the upgrade of vCenter Server.

Workaround: To upgrade Orchestrator 4.2 to Orchestrator 5.1.3.1, start the standalone vCenter Orchestrator installer and upgrade Orchestrator. To start the standalone installer, in the software installer directory, browse to the C:\install_directory\vCenter-Server\vCO\ folder and double-click vCenterOrchestrator.exe.

Internationalization Issues

You might not be able to configure the LDAP settings if your LDAP password contains non-ASCII characters
When you try to configure the LDAP settings in the Orchestrator configuration interface and the LDAP password that you enter contains non-ASCII characters, the process of configuring might fail with an error message of the type Unable to connect to LDAP Server. This issue appears under the following conditions:

When the LDAP password contains characters such as  and ÿ in German and French locales.

When the LDAP password contains any native characters in Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese locales.

Problems handling non-ASCII characters in certain contexts
Using non-ASCII characters in input parameters results in incorrect behavior in the following contexts:

If you run the SCP put or SCP get workflows from the SSH folder on a file with a name that contains non-ASCII characters, the workflow runs, but name of the resulting file on the destination machine is garbled.

If you try to insert non-ASCII characters into attribute names, the characters do not appear. The issue occurs for Web view attributes, workflow attributes and action attributes.

Configuration Issues

vCenter Orchestrator 5.1.3.1 does not support Oracle Database 12c
The Orchestrator server cannot start when it is configured to use Oracle Database 12c.

The Orchestrator authentication configuration might become invalidWhen Orchestrator is configured to use vCenter Single Sign On, if the certificate of the vCenter Single Sign On server changes or regenerates, the Orchestrator authentication configuration becomes invalid and the Orchestrator server cannot start.

Workaround: To fix this issue, import the new vCenter Single Sign On certificate:

Log in to the Orchestrator configuration interface as vmware.

Click Network.

In the right pane, click the SSL Trust Manager tab.

Load the vCenter Single Sign On SSL certificate from a URL or a file.

Click Import.

Click Startup Options.

Click Restart the vCO configuration server to restart the Orchestrator Configuration service after adding the new SSL certificate.

Orchestrator does not work with forest and external trusts in Active DirectoryMultiple domains that are not in the same tree but have a two-way trust, are not supported and do not work with Orchestrator. The only configuration supported for multi-domain Active Directory is domain tree. Forest and external trusts are unsupported.

Support for TNSNames missing when you connect to an Oracle database
You cannot use TNSNames to connect to an Oracle database. You can connect to an Oracle database using an IP address or a DNS name.

SSL certificate is lost when you import configuration from previous installation
If you import the configuration of a previous installation into the current installation, the SSL certificate from the old installation is not loaded. In the Orchestrator configuration interface the Server Certificate tab shows a red triangle.

Workaround: You must import the certificate manually.

Restricted access to vCenter Server inventory can cause errors if you set Session per user
If you select the Session per user option in the vCenter Server tab of the configuration interface, accessing the vCenter Server inventory can result in some errors if the connected user has restricted access to inventory objects.

No error message is displayed on the Network tab of the Orchestrator configuration interface when a network port is already in use
The Network configuration is saved successfully without errors even when the port numbers that you enter are already taken on your host.

Workaround: Make sure the port numbers you enter on the Network tab are free.

Networking Issues

Loss of network connection to vCenter Server can cause workflows to stop
If Orchestrator loses the network connection to vCenter Server while a workflow is running, and if the workflow attempts to access vCenter Server, that workflow stops and does not attempt to restart. Furthermore, the vCenter Server plug-in flushes its cache if it loses the connection to vCenter Server. Consequently, when the Orchestrator server restarts, it fetches all running objects again from the vCenter Server rather than reloading them from the cache. Fetching the objects again can cause peaks in CPU usage, and increases the load on vCenter Server. An intermittent connection to vCenter Server causes frequent workflow failures. If the network connection to vCenter Server is intermittent, then constantly fetching the objects can consume vCenter Server memory, leading to drops in performance.

Workaround: Ensure that the network connection to vCenter Server is stable.

Client Issues

Importing a package using the Orchestrator client fails occasionally
Occasionally, when your database is a MySQL database, importing a package using the Orchestrator client results in the error Unable to import a certificate, reason : Unable to save keystore.

Workaround: Close the error message and attempt the import again.

The Revert option for the parameters table on the Scripting tab of the Edit Actions view does not revert to the last saved state
When you add a parameter to an action script, you cannot remove it using the Revert option.

Workaround: Right-click the parameter and click Delete Selected.

Characters are accepted as the input value for workflow attributes of number type
Format validation has been disabled on workflow attributes that are of the number type. Invalid input values are accepted without any warning, and workflows are saved successfully, which can lead to unpredictable results.

Changes to input parameter descriptions are not propagated to the presentation
If you change the description of an input parameter for a workflow, the change is not propagated to the description in the presentation.

Workaround: Copy the description to the presentation manually.

Miscellaneous Issues

Web views does not support multiple level of presentation field bindingWeb views does not support multiple levels of presentation field binding. For example, suppose the presentation consists of the following fields and bindings:

sourceField

aField bound to sourceField by using a DefaultValue attribute

bField bound to aField by using a DefaultValue attribute

When you change the value of sourceField, the value of aField is also updated, but the value of bField remains the same.

The Convert disks to thin provisioning workflow does not handle virtual machines with snapshots correctly and does not convert the thick-provisioned disks
On completion, the Convert disks to thin provisioning workflow reports that the thick-provisioned disks of virtual machines with snapshots are successfully converted to thin-provisioned, when they are actually not.

Workaround: Do not include virtual machines with snapshots in the workflow.

Windows Server 2008 automatically renames VMOAPP and DAR files to ZIP causing the application installation and plug-in upload in the Orchestrator configuration interface to fail
If you are running Orchestrator on Windows Server 2008, the extension of the archives you download is automatically changed to ZIP. When you are installing an application or uploading a plug-in by using the Orchestrator configuration interface, you must use a VMOAPP or DAR file.

Workaround: Change the ZIP extension back to either VMOAPP or DAR to use the downloaded archive in the Orchestrator configuration interface.

Repeatedly publishing and unpublishing Web views can cause memory issues
Publishing and unpublishing of Web views restarts the Tapestry framework, which regenerates new meta-class information without cleaning up the previous meta-class information. Publishing and unpublishing a Web view by repeatedly calling the methods Webview.enable() and Webview.disable() in a loop in scripts can consume large quantities of memory and eventually leads to performance issues.

Adding values to vCenter Server data object properties of type Array is impossible
When Orchestrator runs scripts, the vCenter Server plug-in converts JavaScript arrays to Java arrays of a fixed size. As a consequence, you cannot add new values to vCenter Server data objects that take arrays as property values. You can create an object that takes an array as a property if you instantiate that object by passing it a pre-filled array. However, after you have instantiated the object, you cannot add values to the array.

In the above code, Orchestrator converts the empty spec.deviceChange JavaScript array into the fixed-size Java array VirtualDeviceConfigSpec[] before it calls setDeviceChange(). When calling spec.deviceChange[0] = new VcVirtualDeviceConfigSpec(), Orchestrator calls getDeviceChange() and the array remains a fixed, empty Java array. Calling spec.deviceChange.add() results in the same behavior.

Workflow input parameters of type SecureString cannot take a null value
You cannot start a workflow with a null value if that workflow takes a SecureString as an input parameter, unless you start the workflow from within another workflow. If you start a workflow with a null value when that workflow takes a SecureString as an input parameter, the server loads attributes from the cache rather than from the Orchestrator database, resulting in a null input parameter. If you then change the workflow state to passive by implementing a long-running workflow element, the attributes are reloaded from the database, converting the null value into an empty string. This is the only way you can use a null value to start a workflow that requires a SecureString input parameter.